As we slouch through this uncertain summer towards another Australia Day, it’s a fair bet we’ll hear much about patriotism, or the various branches of it.
Patriotism, just about everyone with a weary view of the sentiment and a taste for wry maxims agrees, is the last refuge of the scoundrel. But hold on there.
18th-century English writer Samuel Johnson.
Was that really what the old wordsmith Samuel Johnson meant – or even precisely what he said – when he gave us this famous and lasting judgment in 1775?
Dr Oliver Tearle, a lecturer in English at Loughborough University in England, has put the matter to the scholarly test for his online library entitled Interesting Literature, which he presents, modestly, as “all that is most interesting and captivating about literature”.
Searle finds that Johnson’s statement about patriotism and scoundrels has been much misunderstood.
He goes to Johnson’s contemporary and biographer, James Boswell, for the origin of the quote.
“Patriotism having become one of our topicks (sic),” Boswell wrote of a discussion with Johnson on the evening of April 7, 1775, “Johnson suddenly uttered, in a strong determined tone, an apophthegm, at which many will start: ‘Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel’.
“But let it be considered,” Boswell continued, “That he did not mean a real and generous love of our country, but that pretended patriotism which so many, in all ages and countries, have made a cloak for self-interest.”
Pretend Australia Day patriotism is a scoundrel’s refuge. Here’s a solution
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19.01.2024
As we slouch through this uncertain summer towards another Australia Day, it’s a fair bet we’ll hear much about patriotism, or the various branches of it.
Patriotism, just about everyone with a weary view of the sentiment and a taste for wry maxims agrees, is the last refuge of the scoundrel. But hold on there.
18th-century English writer Samuel Johnson.
Was that........
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